Sometimes, Life Goes On
by uh-rudeness
Summary: When Sam dies, Dean falls into addiction, and even Castiel can't save him now. Oneshot. Inspired by 'The A Team' by Ed Sheeran.


"_It's too cold outside for angels to fly."_

**Sometimes, Life Goes On **

Castiel knew he was in for trouble from the moment he saw Dean's face that night.

Dean's eyes, usually so beautifully bright and full of life, were dark and bloodshot. His forehead was creased the way it only was when he was sincerely upset about something. His expression was what really set off Castiel's warning bells, though: he looked agonized, as if he had just had a limb torn from his body without using painkillers or some equally terrible torture. And, to be perfectly honest, that wasn't very far from the truth.

He was standing on the doorstep of the motel he had been staying at with Sam. Cas had been waiting for them to get back from visiting the local hospital to see a victim of what they suspected to be a werewolf. But Dean was the only one at the door, now.

"Dean," Cas said, trying to sound calm, or at least not as terrified as he was. "What's going on?"

Dean looked at him, and Castiel saw a hollowness that should not have existed. Dean was not made to look like this. His face was made for laughter, sarcasm, even anger. This pained emptiness did not belong to Dean Winchester. Or at least, it shouldn't have.

"Sammy, Cas," Dean said hoarsely, stumbling through the doorway and pushing past Cas to sit heavily on one of the beds. Cas noticed for the first time that he was limping—hurt. Dean looked up at him, his face now holding no emotion. His jaw was tight, but his eyes were empty, and his mouth was a straight line. The lack of emotion frightened Castiel. Because for Dean to be this closed off could only mean that he was hurt deeply, and probably beyond repair. Castiel had been paying attention, even if Dean hadn't, and Cas could read Dean fairly well now. Sometimes Cas didn't even let on how much he knew, just to let Dean think he was winning, that he was masking his pain so well that even angels couldn't see it. A kind lie, Castiel figured, wasn't so bad. Then again, the road to hell _was _paved with good intentions.

"Dean?" Cas said. "What happened to your leg? Where's Sam?"

Dean answered quickly, tone flat and empty: "He's dead."

Then Dean Winchester began to cry.

* * *

It had been a drunk driver. After everything, after all of the angels and demons and monsters that had put the Winchester brothers in harm's way, a drunk driver had been the end of Sam. A woman who had drunk too much ran a red light and slammed right into the right side of Dean's Impala. Sam was killed on impact, as was the drunk. There was nothing Dean could do.

At first, Dean refused to burn the body.

"I'm going to get him back, Cas," Dean said the next day, throwing his bag into the passenger seat of the Impala.

"How, Dean?" Castiel said roughly, trying to sound angry instead of scared. "I can't do it; I don't have that kind of power anymore. So what are you going to do? Make a deal? Because _that _turned out so well before."

"What am I supposed to do? Let him be dead? Get over it and move on? You know I can't do that."

"You could, though," Castiel said quietly. "I'm not saying it would be easy, but Sam wouldn't have wanted you to-"

"Well, we don't always get what we want, now do we?" The ugliness on Dean's face broke Cas's heart. Dean Winchester's soul had once been so beautiful. It still was, Cas supposed, in its own way; Dean had just been through too much for it to shine like it used to.

Dean's words echoed through Cas's thoughts: _We don't always get what we want. _As if Castiel didn't know that already. "That is exactly my point, though, Dean. Things don't always go how we-"

Dean wasn't listening. He jumped into the car and switched the motor on while Castiel was still talking, and he drove away without saying goodbye.

* * *

Dean returned two weeks later, still in possession of his soul. And still without his brother.

Neither of them said anything when Dean walked into the motel early one morning and sat on the bed opposite the one Castiel occupied. They just sat there in silence, Dean rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes as Cas watched him, feeling his heart break once again for a Winchester.

"They weren't dealing," Dean said finally, not uncovering his eyes. "Not to me."

"I'm sorry," Castiel said gently. And it was almost halfway true.

They burned the body that night.

Dean and Cas weren't leaving the motel yet. Dean wasn't ready for hunting, and Cas wasn't going to leave Dean alone. Dean spent most of the time sleeping, or staring at the TV without really watching it. When he had finally said that he was going out one day, Cas had been relieved. He let him go without following.

That had been his first mistake.

When Dean returned late that night, the smell of alcohol was coming off him in waves. Castiel closed his eyes, trying to pretend he didn't feel like crying. He heard a thump, and opened his eyes to see Dean sprawled out on the floor. Cas hurried over to him and pulled him back to his feet. Keeping an arm around hiss shoulders, Cas helped Dean to his bed.

Dean grabbed the wastebasket beside his bed, and Cas wasn't really sure why until he began to vomit, coughing violently as he emptied the foul smelling contents of his stomach into the can.

"Dean," Cas said softly, and he knew he sounded too sad, but he couldn't help it.

Dean looked up at Cas from the trashcan and smiled. It was a horrible smile, one that stabbed at Castiel's heart like a knife. This was not the Dean-smile that Cas remembered, the smile that lit up Dean's face and made his eyes crinkle at the corners. It was a half-smile, a fake smile, full of so much bitterness and pain that Cas could hardly stand to look at it.

"I'm pretty shitfaced, huh?" Dean joked in a harsh way that Castiel did not recognize.

"Dean, this isn't going to help." Cas paused, shaking his head. "In fact, it's probably going to kill you."

Dean's lips twisted into another smirk. "Good."

* * *

Dean seemed to fade over the next several months. They had to leave town after he got into a bar fight in which he had nearly beaten a man to his death. They ended up near St. Louis, in a little town full of sketchy people who didn't pay much attention to Dean and Cas. Dean was drunk more often than not, and while it still hurt Cas, he was getting used to it.

Then it got worse.

Dean came back to their new motel one night, drunk like always, but there was something different. It was like he had been infected with feverish energy, and Castiel had no idea what was happening. Angels didn't usually deal with such things. It was far below their pay grade.

"Cas, my man!" Dean said as the angel opened the door for him. He seemed dazed, but not unhappy, which Cas thought was an improvement at first. (That was before Castiel found out why Dean felt this way, and what it was like when this manufactured happiness wore off and left Dean desperate to find it again.)

"Dean." Cas narrowed his eyes as Dean collapsed on his bed, flicking the TV on. "You seem… better."

"Oh yeah," Dean said, grinning in a way that way sloppy and somewhat frightening. "They gave me some good shit."

"Some good _what?"_

Dean held out his arm, which was developing a slight bruise over a vein. "I got shot up, Cas, and I didn't even really have to bleed this time." Dean laughed, sounding maniacal to Castiel's ears. "I haven't felt this light since high school!"

"Are you serious, Dean?" Cas was horrified, finally understanding what this was. Dean looked altogether unbothered, just snorting and turning back to his idiotic doctor sitcom. _"Drugs?"_

"Why the hell not, Cas? I'm gonna die, and I'm gonna die young. I might as well die happy too."

Castiel wanted to tell him that, no, drugs did _not _make you happy. That, actually, they would tear you apart. Love was what made you happy. Cas wanted to tell him about delicate, half-formed feelings; he wanted to grab Dean's shoulders and shake him until he understood that Castiel would do anything for him, that maybe, with time, _he _could make Dean happy. But he didn't.

"Dean… I can't watch you do this to yourself."

Dean shrugged, eyes tightening only a little. "Then go. I won't stop you, Cas. You should go make new friends. Find yourself a girl. Make a life."

Castiel wished he was strong enough to do it. To leave, never come back, and find someone who really wanted him. But Cas knew the only life he would ever want was one with Dean Winchester, the first real friend he'd ever had.

Castiel sighed. "No, Dean. Someone has to be here to clean up your messes."

* * *

After a year of darkness, filth, listening to Dean have loud sex with random women, and other sorts of general ugliness, Castiel was sitting alone in another small, dark motel room. He was waiting, as always, for Dean to come back.

Instead, he got a phone call.

* * *

"Really, Dean? _Really?"_

It was three hours later, and Cas was talking to Dean through the bulletproof plastic wall of a prison visiting area. Castiel had been informed that Dean was arrested trying to steal from an electronics store. When he was caught, they found his drug paraphernalia. Cas wasn't surprised that Dean had been stealing something—Castiel had seen him do worse for drugs over the past months. He just couldn't believe the asshole had gotten himself caught.

Dean shrugged, refusing eye contact. Castiel's feelings had hardened since Dean started using, and he wasn't as affected by the honest shame in Dean's face the way he should have been. As Dean's healthy flesh and muscle had faded away, so had Castiel's emotions. He only let himself feel at night, lying awake in some dingy motel, with Dean either passed out on the other bed, not home yet, or screwing someone six feet away from where Cas lay.

Yes. Castiel had become very good at emotion control lately.

"They've got you for theft and possession, Dean. You're gonna have to do time."

"I can't."

Castiel snorted. "Well, they're not going to be asking for your permission."

"No, Cas, I literally… I _can't." _

Castiel realized that Dean was shaking, a crazed look in his eyes, and he swore. Of course. Dean was going into withdrawal, and with the amount of crap he had been putting into his body, it was going to be pretty bad.

"Spect_acular_," Castiel said (his sarcasm was really coming along, even Dean was becoming impressed). "So I suppose you expect me to get you out?"

"Cas, you have to. _Please."_

The 'please' did not soften or impress Castiel. It was a result of Dean letting his drugs make him weak, of Dean Winchester and all that made him who he was fading away because he didn't give enough of a fuck to stop it anymore. Not without his brother. Nothing would ever fill that hole. Not drugs, not sex, not Castiel. Dean would never really be happy again. The drugs just made him forget for a while. And then, they made him disappear, leaving behind a broken shell that both was and wasn't Dean, and leaving Cas to have to love him regardless.

Castiel despised the please.

But he did what Dean asked anyway. He usually did.

* * *

"Faster, Dean!" Cas yelled. Dean was lagging behind, but he couldn't get caught. Not when they were so close to the Impala. Dean was nearly free.

The fact that Dean was too slow still seemed ridiculous in some sheltered part of Castiel's mind, because one of the best hunters in existence should not be slow. He should be fast as lightening, moving so quickly that even vampires had to work to catch up. But Dean wasn't a hunter anymore. He was a junkie, and junkies were not in shape. They were thin and frail and pathetic.

Castiel turned. He knew what he had to do, and he hated himself for it. He held up a hand, and every ounce of power he had left seeped to them. He was only doing what he had to, he told himself. It wasn't like he had a choice.

Dean made it to the car. The guards had not been a problem once Castiel had interfered.

* * *

Two months after the prison break, it happens, just like Castiel had known it would.

Castiel was at the gas station, picking up cheap junk food, which was pretty much what they lived on. He went back to the motel they were staying at, somewhere in Oregon, and opened the door.

"Dean?" Castiel looked around, and saw that, yes, his roommate was home. He lay in bed the bed, sleeping. "I have food. Get up."

Dean didn't move. Cas, rolling his eyes in a way that was almost human, threw a bag of pork skins at him. "Up, Dean. You have to eat something, you're withering away."

When Dean continued to ignore him, Castiel walked over to the bed and shook his shoulder, hard. That's when Cas realized that Dean wasn't breathing.

* * *

Cas tried. He did. He tried everything.

It was just too late.

* * *

Castiel didn't even bother reporting the death. After all, Dean Winchester had been reported dead a long time before, to get out of a tight spot a shape shifter had put him in. Cas just loaded Dean into the back of the Impala and drove.

He wasn't sure why he drove. He still had enough power to travel _his _way, and it would have been faster. He supposed he just wanted Dean to have one last road trip in the Impala. Cas should have cried the whole way, beating on the dashboard and screaming for God to explain _why. _After all, that was what people did, wasn't it? When they lost the one they loved? But Cas didn't do that. He was silent and still, and his face just felt numb. He drove the quickest route to Laurence, Kansas.

When they finally got to the cemetery, Cas dragged Dean out of the Impala and set him down beside the grave of his mother. It seemed fitting. With Dean, the last of the Winchester had died. He should be put to final rest beside his mother, who had loved him first, and whose death had started the sick cycle of his life.

Castiel didn't give much of a eulogy. He simply stared at the hollow body of the man he loved and said, "Goodbye, Dean."

The turned around and set the body alight with a snap of his fingers. He didn't bother watching it crumble away, instead returning to the Impala. Dean had stopped caring about even it, but Dean would hopefully be healthy and happy where he was going, and he would be livid if Cas just left it to rot. Not that he would ever see Cas to yell about it, but still. It was the principal of the thing.

Cas gave it to a twenty something man who was supposed to be married in a few months, and refused money for it.

"I have no use for it," Castiel said flatly when the man protested that, surely, he wanted some sort of compensation? "Just… take care of it. Pass it on someday."

With that, Cas turned and walked away, sending himself back to the motel Dean had died in after a few feet, and not caring who saw.

* * *

Castiel sat alone in the darkness of the motel, staring at Dean's bed. He felt his body's hunger, but he didn't feed it. Food would not make him feel better. Nothing would.

Dean was dead.

Really, it shouldn't have hurt so much. The real Dean had been dead for a while, as far as Cas was concerned. Ever since the night they burned Sam's body, Dean had stopped being Dean. And Castiel had stayed to watch him fade away, because what choice did he have?

He had loved him. He had loved him a lot.

Castiel's eyes settled on something on Dean's nightstand, and he found himself moving toward it. After all, why shouldn't he? There was nothing left for him. Dean's final death had taken the last of Cas's strength, and he was tired. So tired. His love was useless now, and it tore him from the inside out. God help him, he could not take it.

He knew what would happen. He had seen it himself. He knew what it would do to him

Castiel stuck the needle into his vein anyway.

* * *

Five years later, a man called David Panzer would tell his four-year-old son, Michael, the story of a strange man who gave him a beautiful car for free. Many times, after dinner but before bedtime, they would find themselves out in the garage

"He wouldn't take a penny for her," David would say, shaking his head as he patted the shiny hood of a 1967 Impala. "He just said to take care of her, and pass her on. You know what that means?"

"No," Michael would say every time, giggling with the lie of it.

"That means she'll be yours one day, Mike. Until then, I'll tell you everything you need to know—about cars, and other things. Once you've learned all I can teach, I'll give her to you." The father would wink at him then, eyes sparkling with love. "So I guess you better be a real good listener!"

Michael would nod fervently, looking at the Impala with adoration. "Of course, Daddy!" he would exclaim. "I'll always listen _real _good—Promise!"

Then they would go inside, Michael clinging to his father's hand. Michael would say goodnight to his baby brother, and then crawl into bed to say his prayers. His parents would always come in and kiss him goodnight. And every night, he'd fall asleep and dream of being a big strong man driving the Impala all over, never being afraid of anything because he knew everything his daddy knew, with his brother sitting in the passenger seat beside him.


End file.
